Gov. Jerry Brown’s State of the State addresses to the Legislature are always dotted with mentions of historical leaders, great minds and the Bible. Last year Brown recounted the parable of the fat- and lean-fleshed cows, and name-checked King Charles III and President Abraham Lincoln. This morning there was a reference to George Santayana’s saying about repeating the past, and to the Book of Genesis’ advice to save for hard times.

Apparently Brown thought this might be too complicated for his audience, so he introduced a simple gimmick to underscore his continued call for lawmakers to spend California’s newly plentiful revenue prudently and put billions of dollars into a rainy-day fund.

Brown pulled out a deck of playing cards, with a joker printed on one side with a bar graph of state budget surpluses and deficits — and on the other side with a photo of Brown’s dog Sutter and the caption “Bark if you hate deficits!”

Cute.

But you’d hate to think members of the California Senate and Assembly needed flash cards to teach them about the ills of boom-and-bust budgeting or to motivate them to head off the problem.

And you know the people of the state don’t need the reminder after suffering through the budget cuts forced by the Great Recession and having to approve Proposition 30’s temporary tax hikes to bail out the capitol.

The goals should be clear as state leaders figure out what to do with the new surplus: Put away as much as possible, and don’t go on a spending spree. The question is whether the Democratic-run government will be able to follow through.

Brown’s State of the State — delivered 39 years after his first — ran 17 minutes and was dominated by non-controversial topics. The bullet train received a cursory mention.

Brown took on “critics” who have called governors’ State of the State speeches an outmoded tradition. He seemed to be referring to a column by Joe Mathews that appeared in this newspaper.

Brown devoted five minutes, perhaps the longest passage, to reprising a 2013 theme about returning control to local government. He touted the state’s economic recovery (“What a comeback it is!”), citing the addition of a million jobs since 2010 and the projected budget surplus.